A Blog about the joys and frustrations of growing food, herbs and flowers on a rocky hill near Nakusp, B.C.

A mixed bed in all it's late summer glory

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Somebody knows my days! Buy this book. Seriously.

No pictures for this quickie post, I am preparing an extensive OMG WHERE DO WE START? tour. Just a heads up about a book.If you are a gardener, or know one, the book "Crazy about gardening" by Des Kennedy is priceless. It is not a how to book, it is about life as a gardener. It has been around since 1994 but was new to me.I am an inefficient dabbler, always have been and most likely always will be. Trying to be efficient merely results in paralysis, so I have given up on that. I still always think that the land would be in near perfect order if only I were better at setting priorities! This is a post I did to a facebook gardening group.Why does everything I am trying to do lead to me standing at the sink in the greenhouse potting up? Yesterday I swore I would put the already chitted, cut up and healed over potatoes in. But first I had to remove the thick pile of leaves that someone had given me and that I had dumped in the boxes below the greenhouse, "just for now", last fall. The potatoes have to go there. Underneath I found a rhubarb plant I had also stuck there. "Just for now". I have a few other rhubarb plants desperate to be relocated. There is a perfect place for them too, but that place has been occupied by Meadowsweet, which needs to be moved to the fenced garden's herb section because it turns out deer love it. I know several people who would love a plant, and next week is the big fund raiser plant sale for the local SPCA equivalent, so......off to the potting place we go. I had been toying with the idea of doing a market table with perennials once in a while, but forgot how much work it is.

Des Kennedy description of an afternoon in May, with a long list of chores, each one more urgent and overdue than the other, had me laughing out loud. I feel comforted I am not alone in my madness.

2 comments:

No, dear lady, you are not alone in this. It's a universal dilemma. We sit and wait for the weather to straighten out and then WHAM--everything needs doing all at once. I find myself pulled in so many directions. Each project entails so many "steps" that send me running endlessly between the garden, the potting shed, here, there, EVERYWHERE. It's exhausting. It's stressful. It's wonderful. It's---gardening. Folly of madmen...and the very finest way to spend a life!Enjoy it all and be glad for every day we can do it.And thanks for the book recommendation. I LOVE books and am always searching....

About Me

Originally from Amsterdam, Netherlands, came to Canada with geologist husband and ended up living the simple life in a rural paradise. My passions are reading, gardening, natural healing, and doing my small bit to work towards a greener, more just society.